Information technology drives innovation and innovation is the path to business success. Innovation in business has the same impact that steam had on the industrial revolution.

In fact, it’s hard to imagine any business that has not benefited from the digital revolution. Nowadays the formula for business success is simple: drive innovation with information technology. So, the first thing startups in any industry try to figure out is how to make smart IT recruiting choices. Without a backbone of information technology, a business is not going to go far.

NTT Innovation Institute, Inc. (NTT i³) is one of the best-known companies that accelerate the movement of innovation from initial idea to marketplace implementation. The company is the Silicon Valley-based innovation center for the NTT Group, one of the world’s largest Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) companies. NTT i³ combines access to NTT’s significant global infrastructure resources, investment fund, and research knowledge.

Interestingly, there is no typical day at NTT i³ as each day is unique. As open innovators, it has global network of technology partners. Additionally, NTT i³ mines the labs of its partner operating companies. The primary focus of the company is on a full lifecycle approach to accelerate innovation. Based in Silicon Valley, NTT i³ believes that there is no better place in the world to scale and commercialize ideas and innovations into new technologies and business practices. It is a pivotal point in moving from an initial idea through the commercialization of powerful platforms to address real business and customer problems for the enterprise.

The primary focus of the company is on a full lifecycle approach to accelerate innovation. Being located in the Silicon Valley, NTT i³ believes that there is no better place in the world to practically scale and commercialize ideas and innovations into new technologies and business practices. It’s a pivotal point in moving from an initial idea through the commercialization of powerful platforms, which can address real business and customer problems for the enterprise.

All for Innovation

NTT i³ also combines a trusted long-standing customer relationship of NTT Global with its own software startup expertise and deep enterprise relationships. Working with NTT brings an impressive history in the world of IT infrastructure, networks, and data centers. This is an area that is rapidly evolving for all enterprise businesses, whether it is handled internally or partnered with an external provider.

The NTT Group is an important asset to NTT i³. NTT gives access to the resources of a large global corporation and a chance to scale far beyond a startup, while still being able to be relatively autonomous. Hybrid cloud, network virtualization, IoT data streams, and machine learning are all changing what the world looks like and NTT i³ aims to help NTT drive that rather than merely reacting to it.

The CEO of NTT i³, Nina Simosko says, “We have the opportunity to meet and discuss problems—and potential solutions—with executives who visit our Customer Experience Center (CXC) in Silicon Valley. Our executives integrate these problems with all their inherent challenges into their ongoing work and discussions with companies around the world from South Africa to Germany to Singapore and Japan. With the collaborative innovation approach and the building of technology proofs, all engaged parties benefit from taking ideas and solutions that were once only in the lab to real marketplace settings.”

In May 2017, NTT i³ launched CloudWAN in a globally collaborative effort with NTT Group operating company partners Internet Solutions (IS), the leading pan-African telecoms services provider, and NTT PC Communications (NTTPC), a network service and communication solution provider in Japan. CloudWAN delivers an enhanced user experience, powerful flexibility and extraordinary agility to NTT’s enterprise customers.

CloudWAN is an important part of NTT i³ as it reduces an organization’s setup and maintenance costs, simplifies the complexity of adding new locations, and gives unprecedented control. It quickly became a must-have solution for its unique and exceptional flexibility. CloudWAN seamlessly unifies disparate network deployments. With CloudWAN, it opened a new door to a whole new level of business flexibility and enables rapid business transformation.

On the Road to Success

NTT i³ believes that the most ambitious and game-changing ideas can come from anywhere, and that is where the company looks. Finding and developing ideas is one of the most important things for NTT i³. Its own people are its biggest asset as they come with required skills, experience, and intuition for finding and developing these ideas.

NTT i³ also believes that companies should evolve in a reactive manner that leverages their unique assets and culture, as well as the technology resources they can access. This adds another asset to the company, and that is the trusted relationships around the world with global brands and technologists. This enables it to take ideas out of the lab and into real marketplace experiments and commercialization.

The company has a deep focus on enterprise and industrial IoT, the vast quantities of data it generates, and the technologies such as machine learning and predictive analytics. In a couple of years from now, NTT i³ sees itself in continuing to develop new prototypes and platforms in these areas and to emerge as a leading curator and collaborator of the best minds and makers in these areas around the world.

Meet the Visionary behind NTT i³

Nina serves as President and CEO of NTT i³. Prior to NTT i³, she was Senior Vice President of SAP’s Global Premier Customer Network (PCN) leading both the PCN Center of Excellence and SAP’s Global Executive Advisory Board, and she was a part of SAP’s Global Ecosystem & Partner Group working with SAP’s communities of innovation. She serves on the advisory boards of two early-to-mid stage technology companies: Reflektion and AppOrchid.

“Companies should be constantly evolving to stay relevant and competitive.”